Peter Hahn quits as Seattle Transportation Dept. head

Peter Hahn is leaving his job as director of the Seattle Department of Transportation, after being told by Seattle Mayor-elect Ed Murray that he would not be kept on by the new administration.

Murray had pledged new leadership at SDOT during the campaign, arguing that transportation planning in Seattle had been enveloped by various feuding constituencies.

Hahn, 68, was the point man on Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s pro-transit, pro-bicycle transportation agenda. He was a champion of bicycle lanes and so-called “road diets,” now seen in the city from Nickerson to Fauntleroy to Broadway. Four lane streets have been changed to one lane each way with center lanes for left turns.

“Clearly, streets are not just pipes for cars: They are places,” Hahn said last year.

Hahn used a farewell letter to SDOT employees to boast of his achievements at the Department of Transportation.

“As I go to work today, the holes in the ground that I used to walk by are filling with concrete and glass, and being activated by people,” he wrote. “We are doing great things in the city.”

Under the SDOT’s aegis, Hahn wrote, Seattle’s Mercer Street is “well over the midway point of its multiyear transformation to a beautiful street . . . This project, along with the South Lake Union Streetcar continues to spur magical change in the South Lake Union area.”

The campaign for Seattle’s record Bridging the Gap Levy, decorated bumpy arterials with “Fix this Street” signs. Many streets that bore these signs have not been fixed, and city officials have complained of a billion dollar-plus backlog of road maintenance woes.

Hahn emphasized the bright side.

“We are completing the 7th year, out of 9, in the Bridging the Gap program and are on pace, and in several instances ahead of pace, in accomplishing all that we promised the voters in 2006: A second streetcar line is just months from starting,” Hahn wrote..

The SDOT director celebrates the Spokane Street Viaduct, but makes no mention of the prolonged Bell Street mess in Belltown, or traffic disruptions (particularly in the International District) that have made the First Hill Trolley the city’s most disliked construction project since the bus tunnel in the late 1980’s.

The choice of a new SDOT head, along with a new Seattle Police Chief, will be Murray’s most-watched appointments early in his administration.

Hahn replaced Grace Crunican, the SDOT boss who presided (except for a holiday trip to Portland) during Seattle’s great 2008 snowstorm, which paraluzed the city. As he prepared to go out with McGinn, Hahn said in his departure letter: “We regained public confidence in how we handle snow.”

Crunican landed on her feet. She is now boss of Bay Area Rapid Transit.